Student Instructions

Instructions to Students Using Newsroom 101

Welcome to Newsroom 101, a set of exercises on grammar, usage, spelling and AP style to supplement your course. Please read these instructions carefully. Once you become familiar with Newsroom 101, you will find it consistent and easy to use.

To enroll, go to the Newsroom 101 home page at <newsroom101.net>.

In the left column, click on “Find Your Section” and choose your teacher’s section from the list.
==> Be sure to enroll in the correct section!Work completed in the wrong section cannot be transferred.

The way you log in for the first time depends on whether:

you are paying for yourself through Paypal, or whether

your institution is paying for you.

Pick the following instruction that fits your case.

If you are paying for yourself through Paypal:

Username and password. Create a new account.

For your username, use your complete email address.

Be sure to remember which email address you used.

If you have a Gmail address that you check regularly, please use it as your username. Newsroom 101 uses Gmail for business.

Create a strong password, with at least:

8 characters,

1 uppercase letter,

1 lowercase letter and

1 number.

Make the password difficult for anyone to guess, but easy for you to remember.
Do whatever is necessary so that you remember your username and password.

Site policies. When you sign up, you will be asked to review the site policies — which include the policies on privacy and refunds — and check a box.

Submit and go to Paypal. After you submit your enrollment, you will land on a page with a button to take you to Paypal where you pay $24.95 for Newsroom 101. If you do not have a Paypal account, on the Paypal login page you will find a link that permits you to pay with a credit card.

If Paypal rejects your credit or debit card, that usually means:

The card is invalid, or

It is already associated with a Paypal account and cannot be used except through that account.

If Paypal continues to reject your card, you will need to phone Paypal’s customer support line. See paypal.com for the number.

Newsroom 101 never sees your credit card and cannot help you with Paypal.

If your institution is paying for you:

Username and password. An account has already been created for you by your institution. Log in on the left side of the log-in page, with:

Username: your email address as it was provided to us

Temporary password: [Get this from your teacher]

If that combination does not work, consider whether you might have been registered with a different email address. If so, use that email address as your username.

Do not create a new account! Because your institution has already set up and paid for an account for you, the system already knows you and considers you a “returning user.” If you create a second account, you will be locked out.

Password. You will be prompted to change the temporary password after you log in. Create a strong password, with at least:

8 characters,

1 uppercase letter,

1 lowercase letter and

1 number.

Make the password difficult for anyone to guess, but easy for you to remember.

Do whatever is necessary so that you remember your username and password

Site policies. When you sign up, you will be asked to review the site policies, which include the policies on privacy and refunds, and check a box.

How to retrieve your password. Later in the course, if you forget your password, there is a link (under the log-in form) for creating a new one. It requires you to respond to an email sent to the address you used when you signed up.

In an effort to protect you, email servers sometimes block our emails with instructions on how to reset your password. For that reason, we have rewritten the text of that email to avoid the word “password.” You’ll see a term like “access,” or the abbreviation “PW,” instead of “password.”

If you don’t find the password-reset email in your inbox, check the spam folder.

If you requested to reset your password but do not receive an email, notify us through the Contact form on our home page at newsroom101.net. Tell us which section you are enrolled in, and your institution.

Problems logging in. If you ever have repeated difficulties logging in and cannot obtain the link to reset your password, do not create a new account. Ask for help from another student who is not having this problem. Contact your teacher, who will notify tech support if unable to help.

Help with enrollment problems. Newsroom 101 technical support will try to respond quickly to enrollment problems during the first few weeks of your course. After that, help may be slower in coming. If you wait till late in the semester to enroll, you may have to wait longer for assistance.

Mobile devices. Newsroom 101 works on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones.

Refunds. If you paid for Newsroom 101 and drop the course early in the term before completing much of Newsroom 101, use the Contact form on newsroom101.net to request a refund, which will come through the Paypal account you used when enrolling. You can find more about refunds in the site policies. Paypal will not issue a refund after 60 days.

Things to Remember

You may take any quiz as many times as you choose. Only the highest score will be recorded. Repeating a quiz cannot lower your score on it.

The pretest and posttest are different. They are tests. You may take them only once. Only your first answer to any question will be recorded.

In case you have a technical problem in the middle of the pretest or posttest, you may start one more time and pick up where you left off. Your initial answers have been recorded and cannot be changed, so there is no advantage to taking those tests more than once.

If your teacher assigns the pretest and posttest, the teacher will provide you with the passwords for the pretest and posttest. If you need those passwords, ask your teacher for them.

You must earn at least 90 percent on every regular quiz.

Some quizzes are grouped into units that culminate in a quiz marked “review” (or “all”).

You must score at least 80 percent on every review quiz.

You must complete the preceding quizzes in that unit before you can take the review quiz.

The prerequisites for each review quiz are listed with that quiz, and the prerequisites disappear from the list as you complete them.

Use the gradebook to track your progress. You’ll see a list showing your grade on each quiz. Using the gradebook, you can easily see which quizzes you have completed.

Near the top of the gradebook, you will find a count of the total number of graded quizzes you have completed.

If your teacher requires you to complete a certain number of quizzes, use this count to track how many graded quizzes you have completed.

Technology is imperfect. Things go wrong. If you wait till the last minute to complete your assignments, some problem that would have been a minor inconvenience at an earlier time may become catastrophic. And there will be nothing anyone can do to help. So give yourself a margin of safety. Finish your work on time. Or sooner.

Other Problems?

Go to our home page at <newroom101.net> and, under the Students menu, look at Student FAQ and Student Help.

If these resources do not enable you to solve your problem, use the Contact form (under the Contact menu item) to ask us to help.